Prius Plus

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
10 years ago I saw the first advertisement for an apartment with high speed internet access. It was in San Jose, and had a T1 shared between 16 units. They were able to charge a premium for the apartments and attract a fairly high class of renters.

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I was thinking the same thing! I live in a university town, and advertising free broadband is all the rage. Excellent point. And Costco has already learned that they are *making* money by having chargers installed. You attract people to your business if you let them fuel - and the fuel costs a buck or two at most... if those drivers spend a couple hundred bucks while they're charging, everybody wins.

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One of the seldom mentioned topics is energy theft. What do you do if you come home to find someone parked in your carport space all day charging their car at your expense? Or parked next to your business plugged into an outside 110 outlet you had installed for your own convenience?

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Well, that would suck just like if somebody came by the house and used my hose, or my outside outlets for anything. And of course it wouldn't be legal to steal electricity, just like it wouldn't be legal to fill up with gas and drive away without paying. But the good news, at least, is they wouldn't be able to steal more than a few bucks worth at a time! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[gadget_lover]

I often joke about seeing at least one Prius every time I drive somewhere. I've been pretty much stuck in the house for the last few weeks.

Today I go out to pick up the newspaper. Guess what's driving down the street? Yup, an Ice Green 2003 Prius.

It's gotten to the point where I don't even have to go anywhere to see a Prius.

Daniel

 

[cobb]

My grand idea if hydrogen power got off the ground in a eco friendly way, a car could be a stationary generator. They could offset your electrical use when plugged in in parking garages or your apartment. I mean, the power needed to drive a car would be enough for most homes and then some.

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
cobb said:
My grand idea if hydrogen power got off the ground in a eco friendly way, a car could be a stationary generator. They could offset your electrical use when plugged in in parking garages or your apartment. I mean, the power needed to drive a car would be enough for most homes and then some.

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First point: Hydrogen is NOT an energy source. Hydrogen is an energy carrier (like steam, like rechargeable batteries). We have to consume lots of energy to get a little bit of stored H2 energy. Hydrogen is as much an energy source as a rechargeable battery is - it just takes MORE energy to create external hydrogen through electrolysis than it does to make the hydrogen in a battery that serves as its "charge."

Second point: If a FCV makes a good power generator, then a BEV makes an exceptional one. To put it into perspective, would you want a generator that consumed X amount of energy to make electricity, or one that consumes 4X amount of energy to make electricity? FC's are bascially complicated, inefficient batteries that are fueled externally. If the external fuel part is of some great benefit (like it is much cheaper, easier or faster to fuel) then the 4x energy penalty is at least partially offset. But if we have to make the electricity anyway, we might as well use it in the most efficient way. And currently, the most efficient way we have of storing electricity is in batteries - not in external H2 tanks. If we require more dirty coal power plants to run BEVs, then we'll require 4x as many dirty coal plants to run FCV's - and by extensions our homes if we use the car to power the house.

Using FCVs - as we know them today - as stationary generators is absurd, actually. I can't think of a more expensive way to power a stationary device (like a home). But that's how they're being promoted, isn't it? Makes one stop and wonder...

 

[gadget_lover]

In my area of California, several "peaker plants" have been proposed and licensed to handle local loads. Most all of them are natural gas and are located on the periphery of population centers. Part of the concept is that, because they are local, they will lower the transmission losses and reduce the need to add or upgrade transmission lines and facilities.

Using Solar to pump up batteries in BEVs that can feed back into the grid makes some sense, but forgets that once you drain the battery you had better not have plans to drive far the rest of that day. That makes the BEV a very expensive battery pack that's fairly stationary.

Large companies that have emergency power plants act as peaker plants during high power demand periods. Large phone company buildings have emergency generators that run when the local utility requests the assist. They don't feed back into the grid but they do remove their own load from the grid. The phone company is a huge user of electricity. I think this is called load shedding.

I can see hybrids used as a partial solution for load shedding. A hybrid generates electricity with a fair amount of efficiency, and that could be fed back into a grid tied house to power some or all of the circuits during high demand.

I've not done the math on this, so I could be wrong.

Daniel

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
Part of the concept is that, because they are local, they will lower the transmission losses and reduce the need to add or upgrade transmission lines and facilities.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is exactly why roof-top PV arrays are such a great solution. Zero transmission losses. If I don't use the power, then my immediate neighbors do.

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Using Solar to pump up batteries in BEVs that can feed back into the grid makes some sense, but forgets that once you drain the battery you had better not have plans to drive far the rest of that day.

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Nah. It doesn't forget about drained batteries at all. My entire point was to compare battery storage of energy with H2 storage of the same energy. If the batteries are drained, then so is the tank of the H2 car - and you're in the same position of limited range. The big difference is that BEV's can have two-way charging. The onboard computer only allow so much power to be extracted from each battery pack, and when the peak emergency is over, you top the pack back up from the grid. Unless you have yet another complicated, exensive and heavy system onboard the FCV (hydroysis unit) then you can't put power back INTO the FCV after it has been drained.

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That makes the BEV a very expensive battery pack that's fairly stationary

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There is lots of controversy over how much range is really needed in a private automobile. But the one thing that everybody agrees on is what automobiles do most.. and it isn't "drive." No, in fact, it is "park." Private cars spend far more time parked than they drive. And while parked, a BEV can still be a big part of the "solution."

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Large companies that have emergency power plants act as peaker plants during high power demand periods.

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Yes - but these are less regulated, and typically far dirtier than grid power.

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I can see hybrids used as a partial solution for load shedding.

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If the hybrid could burn bio-fuel instead of gasoline, I'm all for it. Using gasoline to generate electricity - no matter how efficient you could make it - would still be a bad idea in my book.

 

[BB]

A small nit...

Rechargeable batteries generally will only survive a limited number of recharge cycles (and an overall life too)... The battery packs for a car also cost a whole bunch of money to replace. A 20 kWh pack will only store enough for a day or three of power for a typical house.

After a few days of clouds, or during the winter, you will still need some sort of non-(local)-pv non-(small)-battery solution to power a nation.

A fixed installation of batteries would probably make more sense (weight, size, vibration, impact, etc. issues are not an issue) than using a vehicle's storage pack.

Fuel Cells should have the advantage of long life without having to replace the electrodes. --But that is in theory, in practice, Fuel Cells are not widely used because natural gas and other sources of energy (other than pure hydrogen) would quickly ruin the FC reaction plates.

-Bill

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
BB said:
A small nit...

Rechargeable batteries generally will only survive a limited number of recharge cycles (and an overall life too)... The battery packs for a car also cost a whole bunch of money to replace.

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I guess I can't say this enough... We're comparing batteries with fuel cells. Many of the detractions from batteries also apply to fuel cells.

You brought up:
Finite cycles
Expensive to replace

You get the same problems with fuel cells. The difference? Fuel cells cost more to make, cost more to fuel, are more complicated, have shown to have a SHORTER cycle life than modern batteries. You say that FC's *should* have long lives.... what the heck does that mean. Batteries *should* have infinite lives! But here we are - forced to deal with reality. FC's have relatively short cycle lives. Does anybody wonder why we don't have FCV's parked in our garages? Anybody? Even though the car makers have saying for 50+ years that they're the answer?

Of course fixed batteries would make more sense for grid balancing - until you take into account that the batteries are already sitting there in cars - parked in the lot doing nothing else but baking in the sun. Of course this assumes we ever see wide-spread acceptance of the technology. With all the effort currently being put into finding and/or falsly creating the negative aspects of the technology, we're a LONG way off still.

 

[Lurker]

My neighbor is in the market for a new SUV. I kind of half-jokingly suggested that he get a Prius instead. He replied that he heard the battery costs $10,000 to replace. I don't know if that is accurate, but I do know that the local Toyota dealer will happily accept about two hundred dollars to replace one little key fob remote transmitter that locks my minivan (eBay price $20). So I really wouldn't count on them to put a reasonable price on any of their parts. I guess it will be a few years before we find out what the real cost to replace that battery pack is.

 

[Brock]

One point to throw in here, we, as a nation, use the most power on a hot sunny day, perfect for PV (solar electric). If it is overcast we rarely get anywhere near peak loading anyone figure out why /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif.

And yes most power companies do offer "load shedding" credits or rebates. Here in WI they will pay customers $8 a month for June, July and August to put a device on your either you electric water heater and/or home AC and they can shut it off remotely for 30 minute increments, nut not more then 4 hours total, if we get near peak. They did it once last summer and twice 3 summers ago. If everyone participate in a plan like this there wouldn't have been rolling blackouts in CA.

 

[Brock]

Oh and the way people talk about H2 being so great, it is a glorified battery, and it is about 25% efficient compared to 90% for a rechargeable battery. Why the heck would anyone choose to store power that way I will never know? And people that do compare FCV's to EV's always bring up the point that EV's might need an expensive battery replaced at some point, but always leave out that all FCV's built so far had a pretty substantial battery pack in them. All they FCV's is EV's that are charged from the fuel cell rather then the grid like and EV. The cheapest fuel cells going right now are about $5k for a 500w unit, its just crazy. And again where the heck is the H2 coming from?

 

[Brock]

Lurker, tell him to look at the Toyota Highlander, one of the fastest SUV's out there and get in the 30's for mileage.

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
Lurker said:
My neighbor is in the market for a new SUV. I kind of half-jokingly suggested that he get a Prius instead. He replied that he heard the battery costs $10,000 to replace.

[/ QUOTE ]
While I'm not a big fan of using hybrid tech as an excuse to keep building and driving SUVs needlessly, Brock has the best suggestion in this case.

As for the battery replacment - why, oh why are people so damn worried about this?
1. The battery should last the life of the car, and has a long warranty.
2. The battery should cost much less to replace than does the traditional big ICE found in all the cars running around today. Ask the dealer how much an ICE replacement will be!
3. Nobody considers the cost of ICE replacement when they purchase a traditional car.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
Brock said:
Oh and the way people talk about H2 being so great, it is a glorified battery, and it is about 25% efficient compared to 90% for a rechargeable battery.

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For a fun exercise, I'm going to see how concise I can be about the mystery of FCV's

1. Automakers said they couldn't make a good EV. But then they were forced to, and in just a couple of years, they all had one available. To a person, each driver who was lucky enough to get one, has loved it, and hated to give it up. Almost all of these vehicles would still be on the road today (10-15 years later) if they were not taken back by the makers at the end of the leases.

2. Automakers have said since the 60's that the FCV is the answer to making a "green" car. They desperately *want* to make them. The enthusiasm and hype is huge. No law has required them to be built, but the makers will do it anyway, since it is the right thing to do! It is what the people of the world want and need. Of course the makers won't have time or resources to keep making BEVs, so that will have to slide... but no worries, the FCV will be the best thing EVER! Well, here we are. Where are the cars that will save us from our energy and pollution emergency?

But heck - this thread was supposed to be about hybrids...

Make me a CNG/Biodiesel/plug-in-BEV hybrid, and I'm all ears.

 

[cobb]

I think you guys may want to read gurilla power on homepower.com they have articles where folks use battery less solar setups with grid sync inverters to supplement their power needs and lowers their bill. Some have such a setup they make money than just reduce their power bill. Last I looked, I think homepower is charging for their downloads.

Darell, what about a sterlin engine? Couldnt that run on any fuel at a constant speed for a hybrid? What about a diesel? I thought GM or someone made a multifuel engine at one time?

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
cobb said:
I think you guys may want to read gurilla power on homepower.com they have articles where folks use battery less solar setups with grid sync inverters to supplement their power needs and lowers their bill.

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You're aware that I have a grid-tied, batteryless system that fulfills the needs of my home AND my vehicle, right?! Bettery than an article, you've got a real person here! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Darell, what about a sterlin engine? Couldnt that run on any fuel at a constant speed for a hybrid? What about a diesel? I thought GM or someone made a multifuel engine at one time?

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Multi-fuel vehicles have been hout for quite some time now. The big problem? Availability of the alternative fuels! Most of those cars are run on pure gasoline only because that's all that's available in many areas. Great idea - poor implementation.

 

[gadget_lover]

Lurker, The Prius battery, if replaced in it's entirety with a brand new one is only a fraction of that cost. The battery is modular, and can be replaced one part at a time if a cell or two is defective. Slightly used batteries are availble due to cars that are totaled in accidents.

BTW, The Prius battery should last over 150,000 miles. If it fails before that it's replaced under warranty for free. Search this forum for Prius and Battery to seen more on the subject.

Darell, thanks for bringing up the point about the fuel cell not being chargable at home. I would certainly not want a 5,000 PSI tank in my garage. Neither would I want the pumps required to fill it.

BTW, anyone want to guess what a room temperature fuel cell costs that 's sized for an automobile?


Daniel

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
Darell, thanks for bringing up the point about the fuel cell not being chargable at home. I would certainly not want a 5,000 PSI tank in my garage. Neither would I want the pumps required to fill it.

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Some folks will metion having a home solar-powered hydrolyzer. And why not? As long as you have room and money for 4x the PV panels as you'd need for a BEV, there's no stopping you! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif BTW, current FCV designs (if the car is to have range better than about 60-70 miles) call for 10,000 - 12,000 PSI onboard tanks. Imagine how much energy it takes just to compress the gas to that pressure!

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, anyone want to guess what a room temperature fuel cell costs that 's sized for an automobile?

[/ QUOTE ]Currently they cost between $500,000 and $800,000. And this is after 60 years of development. And of course there isn't a fuel cell stack yet made that can power a full-featured automobile directly - without the need for batteries and/or capacitors to store the energy for quick extraction.

I'm going to a CA Fuel Cell Partnership meeting tomorrow evening. I suck at keeping my mouth shut at these things, so I'll probably get myself in a lot of trouble as usual. They invariably start off with how we need "clean" automobiles, and how BEVs can't work because they're so expensive and the range sucks... then they launch into how great FCV's will be at some undetermined date in the distant future when we can use them to power our homes, etc. You've all heard it before....


Daniel

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[BB]

Darrell,

I did not intend to start a Fuel Cell debate--I was in a rush to leave.

Fuel Cells are not practical now, and probably will not be practical for anytime in the near future on a general use home/commercial scale. And, I agree that batteries are more efficient as a storage medium than FC's (with high pressure tanks or what not) will probably ever be.

What I was trying to do was suggest that we should be looking at batteries at home (or local facility--equivalent to a local telephone central office).

Regarding using solar the year round, in the San Mateo CA area:

Summer 2.3 kW system gives 490 kWh for July
Winter 2.3 kW system generates 195 kWh for December

And my electric use peaks in January time frame (probably due to the fact we have an old electric drier, which came with the house, that is usually only used in the winter to augment line drying in the garage). To be 100% solar, I would need to up the system to near 3.5 kW to run my average winter usage. Plus I would need to store approximately 10 kW hours per day (maybe 30-70 kWhs worth) for those dark winter days. Assuming that I did not really cut back on power use (conserving power is good anytime).

Looking at our roof area and overall system costs, a 3.5 kWh system looks pretty good for us. Any larger, we would have to mount panels in the yard or graft them on the house (and a larger inverter). Any smaller, we have an oversized inverter.

-Bill

 

[Darell]

[ QUOTE ]
BB said:
To be 100% solar, I would need to up the system to near 3.5 kW to run my average winter usage. Plus I would need to store approximately 10 kW hours per day (maybe 30-70 kWhs worth) for those dark winter days. Assuming that I did not really cut back on power use (conserving power is good anytime).

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Of course it depends on one's definition of "100% solar"... but having a grid-tie system allows you to average your consumption over the entire year. So, like me, you'll have tons of excess in the summer, and you'll take that back out in the winter. With a grid-tied system, you likely wouldn't need anything over 2.5kW. With this system you pay PG&E (I assume all over the Bay Area) a small monthly fee to be your broker and to be your limitless "battery" to store your summer power for your winter useage. Up here, summer is the huge consumer with all the AC units and pool pumps.